With growing economic globalization, more and more people are attempting to learn a second or non-native language. Opportunities for doing so are fairly limited. For example, language learners can enroll in a language course or immerse themselves in the non-native language culture. In addition, the Web offers a number of translation tools such as, for example, Google® Translate. With Google Translate, a user enters a word or phrase, and a translation in a user-selected non-native language is presented.
Although these options are effective, language learners continue to look for non-traditional ways to practice their newfound skills. One non-traditional way is to perform a general Web search using a non-native language. For example, a Chinese user attempting to learn English could access, for example, a general search engine such as Bing™ and change the language settings from Chinese to English. The Chinese user could construct a query comprised of English language words. In turn, the search engine would search English language documents and return English language search results.
However, many language learners have not achieved the aptitude to perform this type of search. These users are limited to using a general search engine in their native language or using a vertical or bilingual search engine such as, for example, 2lingual.com by Google®. A language learner using a bilingual search engine exhibits unequivocal intent to learn a non-native language or second language. For example, with 2lingual.com, the user specifically accesses the site and specifies the languages used for the search. There is currently not a general search engine that is able to recognize a user's intent to not only perform a general Web search but also to be presented with language learning opportunities on the general search engine results page.